Wednesday, December 2, 2009

silly knits

One of my favorite pastimes is making things and then taking silly pictures of them. Photographing items with absurd props seems to magnify their cuteness, as demonstrated below.

Figure 1: Simple rolled brim hat with leaf accent.



Figure 2: Baby booties with contrast color upper and cuff and picot ribbon ties.


Alone, these items might be considered somewhat cute because of small details such as a knit leaf or ribbon ties. However, much of the items' cuteness is due to their small size, which is not visible in photographs with them unmodeled or on a plain background with nothing around for scale. Note in our next photo, Figure 3, how their cuteness is magnified by the use of props, such as being modeled by a stuffed whale.


Figure 3: Stuffed whale toy with crooked mouth and asymmetrical eyes, wearing hat and booties.



In our final example, Figure 4, you will note that the photo becomes even cuter through creative posing of the whale. Even though in Figure 3, there is already an incongruous combination of elements, such as a sea-faring mammal wearing shoes and a hat, Figure 4 increases the readings on the cute-o-meter with the whale imitating a tri-ped by standing on its tail and two bootie-clad flippers, and hat worn slightly askew for a touch of insouciance.

Figure 4: Standing whale in hat and booties.



That's right. A very productive use of time.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

advent calendar from matchbooks

A few weeks ago, I went to a clothing swap. People bring the clothes that they don't wear anymore, sort them by size, and then get to take home items that other people brought. It's actually more of a general stuff swap, though, since some other items available to take home included food, an air mattress (with fixable hole), shoes, and fabric. Clothing swaps are pretty exciting since you get to try out clothes that you might never have bought for yourself, but are kind of cute anyway... plus, everything is free! (freeeeee!)

At the end of the night, as we cleaned up to donate the extra things that no one wanted, among the remnants was a bunch of old matchbooks. I wondered why anyone would save and then go to the trouble of bringing empty matchbooks, but guessed that maybe there could be some craft project involving old matchbooks.

Lo and behold, Sweet Paul has made a simple and very cute advent calendar out of 25 of them. I sort of (but not really) feel sad that I didn't take home the empty matchbooks from the swap.